Research School Network: Supporting Disadvantaged pupils in the covid landscape


Supporting Disadvantaged pupils in the covid landscape

by Greenshaw Research School
on the

Unprecedented. I don’t know about you, but it feels like that’s one of the buzz words of 2020 alongside pandemic, furlough and quarantine. And I don’t want to cause a mini-Twitter explosion by suggesting that school closures as a phrase isn’t far behind. Let’s go with home learning instead.

The thing is, this pandemic is unprecedented so we can’t hide from that word. None more so than when we consider ourselves willing and able to learn from the evidence that exists in terms of how we respond to situations or in what we decide to implement in our schools. Actually, there is no evidence which aligns exactly with this situation and that’s because this situation is, well, unprecedented.

There are some glimpses of light in this regard: the EEF conducted a rapid evidence review – published in August – which extrapolated from research conducted into school closures (actual ones) like the summer holidays and the impact of that on children’s learning.

From this, they concluded 3 things:

- School closures are likely to reverse progress made to narrow the gap in the last decade;

- Supporting effective remote learning will mitigate the extent to which the gap widens;

- Sustained support will be needed to help disadvantaged pupils catch up.

It still sounds like doom and gloom, but there are also some glimpses of light too.

Supporting effective remote learning

Schools have chosen to conduct remote learning in lots of different ways, and there isn’t much evidence to suggest that one way is better than any other way. Nevertheless, the evidence behind remote learning points towards the ingredients of high quality teaching being the key components for successful learning.

Aspects such as scaffolding, clear explanations and feedback are more important considerations than how and when the learning happens.


Therefore, it is crucial to be working right now on your school’s contingency plans for remote learning for those children self-isolating. These questions might help direct your planning for this:

  • Can you align your online curriculum to reflect what is taking place in the classroom whilst the pupils are at home?
  • Whether you’ve gone for live lessons, or recorded sessions, is there scaffolding and clear explanations in the delivery of content?
  • Are there staff at your school who can take responsibility for groups of pupils who are self-isolating, speaking to them on a regular basis to keep motivation high, as well as to look at what they have completed?
  • Are you getting learning value from the LSAs in the classroom? Could they be re-deployed, at least some of the time, to support pupils involved in home learning?
  • Can you use audio recording tools to support speedy online feedback, such as the teacher verbally recording their thoughts on the work?

Sustained support

Managing to sustain any intervention is hard enough, but with the injection of a global pandemic, this can test our resolve even more. In sustaining targeted support, we would need to consider our planning phase very carefully to decide what strategies to employ to do this.

This is where the tiered approach model may be of some use. The EEF have adapted the tiered approach first published in their guide to Pupil Premium, refining it to consider how best to plan our current response – all the EEF’s Covid 19 resources can be found on their website.

This tiered approach focuses first and foremost on teaching. The evidence here is over-whelming: the best thing you can do to support your pupils is to ensure that there is high quality teaching across your school. Whether the pupil has SEND or is classified as disadvantaged, the evidence is the same – work on improving teaching and learning across the school and pupil attainment will follow.

To help illustrate this point, this graph shows the gaps in PP pupils at schools with different Ofsted outcomes.

PP graphic

This graph from the EEF’s 2017 report into the Attainment Gap indicates two points:

1. The attainment gap is consistent across all schools, regardless of their Ofsted rating.
2. A disadvantaged learner will be more disadvantaged by attending an inadequate school than an outstanding school.

Note that whilst the in-school gap is consistently 10 or 11, the between school gap is wider. A disadvantaged student in an inadequate-rated school is 12 points lower than a disadvantaged student at an outstanding-rated school.

This could suggest a couple of things. It would suggest that you disregard your in-house gap, and focus instead on using national benchmarks as a comparison tool. It would also seem to reinforce the point that – if we extrapolate that schools are classed as inadequate at least in part due to the quality of their teaching and learning – a whole school focus on improving learning standards will improve outcomes for disadvantaged learners.

What next?


Consider using the EEF’s tiered approach to plan for your response to disadvantaged learners. Do so with caution, understanding that implementation is key to success.

Reflect on where your disadvantaged learners are in line with national benchmarks. Are you happy that teaching and learning is a high enough priority across your whole school, with enough staff CPD to support this?

Take a look at the National Tutoring Programme website and think whether you would like to sign up to use this subsidised resource.

Consider whether you might want to seek the support of your local research school to help plan out your implementation or to seek more knowledge and guidance in what best bets’ to use.

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